In mid-2024, Beijing-based artist TUTU held his solo show PRANKS at Art 1: New Museum Jakarta. The exhibit was filled with portraits of people in TUTU’s signature cartoon-like style, as chubby children with mischievous grins that are up to even more mischief. Despite also featuring his renditions of popular paintings in Western art history canons, an overwhelming number of these portraits were appropriated close-ups of colonial rulers. Here, TUTU has depicted everyone from Henry VIII, Napoleon Bonaparte and even Queen Elizabeth II as ‘naughty’ children.
These seemingly playful and light-hearted pieces subtextually contain a message of decolonization. They are satire, which utilizes humour to shatter the illusion of regal royalties —an image that the original portraits have perpetrated to present an image of supremacy. In TUTU’s hands, these very portraits are used to expose them based on how they have treated the colonies. Here, they are mocked as spoiled, child-like, ruthless oligarchs who strip nations of their dignity and resources, all with a smile on their faces. This is why the portraits of royalties by TUTU are aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of Reduced Inequalities.
The sentiments surrounding decolonization that TUTU’s paintings convey were echoed by academics after the death of Queen Elizabeth II. “I think Elizabeth II’s rule prevented a reckoning and allowed for a sense of continuity and continued denial about the extent of change in the last 70 years, […] Decolonization was supposed to force the acknowledgment of wrong. That never came because it was always masked by the continuity of the Queen,” says Priya Satia, a history professor at Stanford University specializing in the British Empire. Hence, there is a need for continued efforts to unmask colonial forces as they operate in the present day.
TUTU’s PRANKS exhibit cleverly uses satire to question colonial power structures by reimagining rulers as naughty children, poking holes in the self-important portrayals often seen in their official portraits. By transforming figures such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Queen Elizabeth II into caricatures, TUTU undermines the narratives of power and grandeur these rulers upheld, highlighting the exploitation and injustice faced by colonies. His work reminds viewers that decolonization isn’t only a historical process but a continued effort to confront and dismantle lingering colonial legacies, starting with people’s personal views of different monarchies.
Find out more about Pranks and other initiatives by TUTU on his Instagram @lizhuotutu.